GATOR PARK PREPS 2,000 ALLIGATORS FOR IRMA Orlando Gator Park Promises None Will Escape During Hurricane

“This isn’t our first rodeo,” park director Mike Hileman told HuffPost on Saturday as his employees prepared to close the 110-acre theme park, located roughly 13 miles outside of Walt Disney World.

“We have a detailed hurricane procedure in place,” he assured. “We have double fences, a large perimeter fence that goes around the entire property.” 

The assurance came just weeks after Hurricane Harvey struck southeastern Texas, with its powerful floodwaters threatening the release of hundreds of gators from Gator Country, an animal sanctuary in Beaumont. There, water nearly flooded over fences surrounding their reptiles, threatening their enclosure. At Gatorland, where the largest gators are 14-feet long, Hileman insisted that even if one of their eight-feet-tall fences gets destroyed or blown away, “they are still not getting off of this property.”

That’s even with most of the gators preparing to ride out the storm in their outside pools. Many of the park’s other residents ― including panthers, bobcats, goats, birds, raccoons and snakes ― had to be moved inside, he said.